When this rendition came out in 1996, it was greeted as a "naughty cover." A parody of some sort. When I hear it now, I just think it's awesome, and not disrespectful of the original disco version at all, i.e. even though disco was the ultimate in uncool from the point of view of the grunge generation in whose wake Cake gained its burst of fame, the boys in the band were not slaves to such fashion and so used this old groove to create their new groove. I think, though, that the question "is this a joke or not?" is a misunderstanding of irony. This is not a case of finding an already written song in their style and performing it; it really is intended to be weird and surprising. Irony is such that the listener can take it as ridiculing or praising the original; it does not require the artist to take a stance either way.

2. "That's what she said." Many jokes, and even entire forms of joke (the knock-knock) are so overdone that they contain no humor in themselves for anyone over the age of 10, certainly not humor of the unexpected variety, yet you can, in earnest jest (intentional oxymoron there), recite them as a sort of humorish mantra. Are you still trying (and failing) to make a joke, or are you commenting on humor itself and its social role? ...i.e. expressing lightheartedness, as if to say "insert joke here" and so remind the listener of the realm of the comic, which in many situations is actually enough to do the job of easing the tension in the room and distracting from one's daily hell. So, I'm claiming that you can make bad jokes ironically, with a purpose that floats in a realm of indeterminacy between actually joking and parodying the joke process. A knock knock joke told by an adult is ironic in the way the Cake song is (and if it's actually funny, then it's successful in the way the Cake song is).

3. I keep blogging on this because this approach to humor thoroughly infects my life, and I'm trying to figure it out. I'm not claiming to actually be funny here, but just like the avant garde art fans described in the Danto episode recognize that art can be found even in ordinary objects, i.e. it's a way of seeing, that's how I feel about humor.

As a musician, I use Cake's technique as a stylistic regularity: I was (partially) trained as a foo-foo classical composer who at age 17 thought of rock as barbaric and stupid, yet I now often write big, cheesy rock songs, and while this was in part a simple evolution and discovery that my old viewpoint was limited, irony was my way into these new realms, and still enables me to write, e.g. country songs or funk songs that I have no cultural reason to (not being particularly influenced by or properly appreciative of those generes).

On the podcast, our initial conceit (still present in our opening spiel) is the rebellion against professional philosophy. Though I've evolved on this issue (e.g. whether it's neurotic to fetishize over Kant's every stray thought as a Kant scholar would be required to do) in the years since we started, even at the start, the bombast was ironic in the sense I've been describing: a way of calling attention to an issue (that there's something screwy with the stance that most practitioners of philosophy take towards philosophy, just by professional necessity) that I'm honestly ambivalent about. I'm playing with the idea.

In general, not being too afraid of saying dumb things of a certain sort (one dude called me the Donald Trump of the podcast) is my way of not really taking a position, but instead trying to shift the framework of the debate. So, no, I don't really think Socrates is an asshole, but I had the hypothesis (back when I would say that kind of stuff in our early podcasts) that approaching philosophical texts with some degree of hostility would incite our skeptical faculties to see if the text really had something to say to modern life or not, instead of taking our teachers' word for it that he was a genius and that we need to just pore over his work trying to understand every nuance and not have any time left to actually think for ourselves. I still think there's something to this approach, though I quickly became much more patient with the texts once I'd fully taken on the task of trying to learn/relearn this stuff en masse rather than simply dipping into my moldering store of knowledge left over from school.

Comments

There is a better example of the “Death Cab for Cutie” guy (Hipster) covering “Arvil Lavigne” (Corporate manufactured Rock) song “Complicated”. The audience are clearly laughing at corporate “Sell out” rock songs; but they don’t seem to realize behind Arvil Lavigne are professional songwriters who really know how to write and structure great pop tunes. The joke (Irony) flips on him as it shows how catchy the song really is and it dwarfs his own hipster songs in comparison.

There was a cool debate about this on NPR a few years ago. When people who think they are “cool” step into areas over their heads. The irony flips when the “Populist” song is cooler than the hipster singing it.

The internet is often referred to as an “Army of Davids”. Some might say, bring back Goliath.

Your last two posts on Irony and Humour as Epoch were not only insightful but really hit home with me. I’ve always tried to locate the philosophical underpinnings of my attempts at humour and have never found a means to discuss this with anyone. Mostly because it devolves into a meta conversation, unless one is actively looking for the social or philosophical significance of humour.

As someone who is admittedly arrogant, but in most cases only for the sake of humour, your point about the human motivations for it were an eye-opener to me. It does seem like a joke of that sort serves the purpose of just putting it out there for the sake of amusement, without coming to a decision about whether one is actually arrogant or not. Equivocation, basically.

I always thought of it was a skill, a talent – a demonstration of my wit. But after reading your post, it does betray signs of sense of denial and the need for greater self-reflection on one’s humility.

Whoa, Diana, I’m going to have to think about that one a bit. I’ve gone through a couple of short Zappa phases, but the last one was like 8 years ago. Certainly interesting stuff, some portion of which I honestly liked, but his sense of humor is certainly not mine. I’ll have to descend into his depths a bit over the next month and check back.

Is obnoxious arrogance ever justified? I tend to think not but don’t think it’s such a significant sin such that it’s worth commenting on after someone’s death. 🙂 It’s only an issue if I have to deal with that person personally.

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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